Historically, transactions in many financial markets were conducted via third-party intermediaries known as “voice brokers” who would take orders to buy and sell financial instruments over the telephone and match those orders to execute a transaction. More recently, however, these markets have seen the introduction of numerous electronic trading systems that permit principals to directly enter buy and sell orders and match those orders with no human intervention. Such systems are currently in use in markets for many classes of financial instruments including stocks and bonds, as well as markets in which transactions result in a bi-lateral contract representing a financial instrument (e.g., foreign exchange, loans, and OTC derivatives). These latter markets present special implementation challenges because electronic trading systems used in such markets must include a mechanism for confirming that the credit risk associated with any given transaction is acceptable to both parties before completing a transaction.
The proliferation of electronic trading systems, however, has not completely removed the need for voice brokers. Rather, the voice broker has survived and continues to play an important role in certain trade execution and credit risk transfer processes, even as to transactions conducted via electronic trading systems. Human brokers provide certain advantages particularly with respect to transactions in illiquid markets or those where a large size is demanded or where credit between potential counterparties is inadequate. Because human brokers are often called on to execute some of these more challenging transactions, and because they often concurrently represent multiple clients with differing market positions, there is a need for specialized broker user interfaces that facilitate the managed trading of financial instruments via electronic trading systems. Moreover, there is a general need for improved user interfaces that facilitate and render more efficient order management and post-trade processing by both brokers and dealers. The present invention is directed to providing such improved user interfaces.